New York - President Donald Trump insisted
on Tuesday that left- and right-wing extremists became violent
during a weekend rally by white nationalists in Virginia,
reigniting a political firestorm over US race relations and
his own leadership of a national crisis.
Trump, who drew sharp criticism from Republicans and
Democrats for his initial response, reverted on Tuesday to his
position that both sides were at fault for the violence, a day
after bowing to pressure to explicitly condemn the Ku Klux Klan,
neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups.
Appearing angry and irritated, the president maintained that
his original reaction was based on the facts he had at the time.
"You had a group on one side that was bad, and you had a
group on the other side that was also very violent. And nobody
wants to say that, but I'll say it right now," Trump said,
referring to right- and left-wing protesters.
From there, the back and forth with reporters turned tense.
"Not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all
of those people were white supremacists by any stretch," Trump
said of the deadly protest. "There was a group on this side.
You can call them the left ... that came violently attacking the
other group. So you can say what you want, but that’s the way it
is."
The violence erupted on Saturday after white nationalists
converged in Charlottesville for a "Unite the Right" rally in
protest of plans to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee, commander
of the pro-slavery Confederate army during the US Civil War.
Many of the rally participants were seen carrying firearms,
sticks and shields. Some also wore helmets. Counter-protesters
likewise came equipped with sticks, helmets and shields.
The two sides clashed in scattered street brawls before a
car plowed into the rally opponents, killing one woman and
injuring 19 others. A 20-year-old Ohio man, James Fields, said
to have harbored Nazi sympathies, was charged with murder.
Two state police officers also were killed that day in the
fiery crash of the helicopter they were flying in as part of
crowd-control operations.
Addressing the melee for the first time on Saturday, Trump
denounced hatred and violence "on many sides." The comment drew
sharp criticism across the political spectrum for not explicitly
condemning the white nationalists whose presence in the Southern
college town was widely seen as having provoked the unrest.
Critics said Trump's remarks then belied his reluctance to
alienate extreme right-wing organisations, whose followers
constitute a devoted segment of his political base despite his
disavowal of them.
Yielding two days later to a mounting political furor over
his initial response, Trump delivered a follow-up message
expressly referring to the "KKK, neo-Nazis and white
supremacists and other hate groups" as "repugnant to everything
we hold dear as Americans."
Trump's detractors dismissed his revised statements as too
little too late, but his remarks newly inflamed the controversy.
Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke immediately applauded
Trump on Twitter.
"Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to
tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist
terrorists in BLM/Antifa," Duke wrote, referring to Black Lives
Matter (BLM) and anti-facists.
Democrats seized on Trump's latest words as evidence that
Trump sees white nationalists and those protesting against them
as morally equivalent.
"By saying he is not taking sides, Donald Trump clearly is,"
Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer of New York, said. "When
David Duke and white supremacists cheer your remarks, you're
doing it very, very wrong."
In a similar vein, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, a
Democrat, said Trump's characterisation of the violence missed
the mark.
“Neo-Nazis, Klansmen and white supremacists came to
Charlottesville heavily armed, spewing hatred and looking for a
fight. One of them murdered a young woman in an act of domestic
terrorism, and two of our finest officers were killed in a
tragic accident while serving to protect this community. This
was not 'both sides,'" he said.
Administration officials, hoping to put the controversy
behind them after the remarks on Monday, worried that the
controversy would now last for days and potentially affect the
president's ability to made legislative and policy achievements.
Asked about the White House's next steps, one official said:
"I think next steps are just to stop talking."
Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO labor federation
representing 12.5 million workers, became the latest member of
Trump's advisory American Manufacturing Council to resign in
protest, saying, "We cannot sit on a council for a president who
tolerates bigotry and domestic terrorism," Trumka said.
"President Trump's remarks today repudiate his forced remarks
yesterday about the KKK and neo-Nazis."
Three other members of the council - the chief executives of
pharmaceutical maker Merck & Co Inc, sportswear company
Under Armour Inc and computer chipmaker Intel Corp
- resigned on Monday.
In his remarks on Tuesday, Trump also sympathised with
protesters seeking to keep Lee's statue in place but offered no
equivalent remarks for those who favored its removal.
"You had people in that group ... that were there to protest
the taking down of a very, very important statue and the
renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name," Trump
said.
Trump also grouped former presidents George Washington and
Thomas Jefferson, two of the nation's founding fathers, together
with Confederate leaders such as Lee, Jefferson Davis and
Stonewall Jackson, who fought to separate Southern states from
the Union, noting that all were slave owners.
"Was George Washington a slave owner? Will George Washington
now lose his status? Are we going to take down statues to George
Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? ... Because he was a
major slave owner," Trump said.
On Tuesday, Trump explained his initial restrained response
by saying: "The statement I made on Saturday, the first
statement, was a fine statement, but you don't make statements
that direct unless you know the facts. It takes a little while
to get the facts."
In what became at times a heated exchange with reporters
shouting questions, Trump said, "You also had people that were
very fine people on both sides."
He said that while neo-Nazis and white nationalists "should
be condemned totally," Trump said protesters in the other group
"also had trouble-makers. And you see them come with the black
outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats. You got
a lot of bad people in the other group too."